ES. What makes Info Salons stand out from others? Tell us about Info Salons’ journey and its major achievements.
Roxanne Wong. Info Salons Group has 32 years of exhibition industry experience, starting from Sydney, Australia in 1990, launched Shanghai, mainland China office in 2005, Dubai, MENA office in 2007, Hong Kong office in 2008, and Malaysia office for APAC region in 2022. Info Salons has been running by two parties since June 2022 and divided into APAC and MENA regions. All offices have strong and tight connections with each other, like what we did in the part 30 years. For APAC region, besides visitor management service, we are now providing one-stop smart event solution for exhibitions, conferences and brand activities including database management(venue management system, exhibition management system and visitor management system), online marketing campaign, online registration service, onsite badge printing and access control services and temp staff management.
We served around 100-150 events per year and our clients are all from the Tier 1 like Reed, Informa, Hannover, Clarion, VNU, and others who have deep local relations from the Government and Ministry of Commerce. We have deep cooperation with the top vendors from different fields and provide package services together to our clients. They can run events without extra labours. If asking what makes Info Salons different, I will say it’s the complexity of our globalization and localization. As an international company, we have offices in different countries and support each other from different branches. It makes us easier to provide professional and leading-edge services to our clients. We have been working in this industry for over 30 years, it makes us not only a supplier, but more like a partner who can work and grow together with our clients. Also, with the globalization, it makes our prices more competitive, which brings our clients better services with reasonable budgets. We have strict regulations throughout our offices that data security is and always on our top priority. It’s the core asset for all of our clients and we need to make them feel trustful. On the other hand, globalization is not enough for us, we must be localization. Each country has their own habit to manage events.
For example, during the past COVID years, China market has its own way to run onsite events, and it needs your strong connection with specific departments from the Government to better understand their needs. You have to make standard tech developments with the Police department and you need to be in the specific white list to provide services. In that case, an international company with reputation is not enough, we can help our foreign clients to manage local events much easier. The combination of the above two points makes us stand out from others.
ES. Give a brief overview of your background and your role in the company.
Roxanne Wong. I am the Managing Director of Info Salons APAC since June 2022. Actually, I was born and grew up in Hong Kong, graduated from Shanghai University of Finance and Economics and majored in marketing. After that, I had the chance to live aboard in US after I left my previous job, and that’s where I met the former GM from Info Salons China and decided to join this family.
I joined Info Salons since 2014 and before that, I worked in the Fortune Global 500. I have been in the role of project management, marketing and sales leader during my career. In July 2021, I was promoted to be the General Manager of Info Salons Shanghai, providing guidance and support for our China team. I have participated in many projects in different countries and familiar to manage relationships with international clients. I have to say, I have been grown up with Info Salons together. With the re-structure of Info Salons Group, I have this chance to work as Managing Director for APAC region and it’s the pleasure to work with all my colleagues. Despite the damage from COVID, I am more looking forward to the upcoming challenges and opportunities existing after all the changes of this industry.
ES. Are there any upcoming projects that you are working on that you can disclose at this very moment?
Roxanne Wong. Sure, we just finished our first show in Guangzhou, China, I believed that’s also the first show in Guangzhou for Year 2023 after Chinese New Year(We normally count a fresh start after the Chinese New Year)! All the members from our team are really excited, it’s so amazing after the whole 3 years after the COVID attacked. The market has been back slowly and we still have so many upcoming events taking place in China. Besides local events, some of our international events are finally back since foreigners are easier to visit China now. We will have our first international event back, that’s Luxepack Shanghai (from French organizer) in April in Shanghai, China. A lot of foreign organizers are starting to contact us and to know more about the possibility to kick-off their events in China again.
As you may know, we have Shanghai, Hong Kong and Malaysia offices in APAC region. For Year 2022, Hong Kong hasn’t recovered yet but this year things changed. A lot of our clients are planning to move their events back to Hong Kong, we will welcome Art Basil, Jewelry Fair and Cosmoprof Asia in Hong Kong. They didn’t take place or in a small scale only during the past three years and I am happy to say they are back and ready to welcome all the attendees to the original or even bigger scales. In Year 2022, we launched our Malaysia office as we found out that the South-East Asia markets re-opened and our clients had strong request to those countries, so we decided to setup Malaysia office to cover countries including Malaysia, Singapore, Vietnam, Thailand, Indonesia and Philippine. We will soon have Vinexpo Singapore in May.
ES. The business world saw changes in 2022. How would you summarize the year 2022 for Info Salons?
Roxanne Wong. To be honest, 2022 was totally different for our different offices. For our Hong Kong and Malaysia offices, the word will be “OPPORTUNITY”. They kept quiet for the past 2 years and suddenly bang, everything started to recover. My team was fully booked and busy with all our clients. They had to managed show by show, and had no time to take a rest, and they still cherished, it’s worth to wait. Frankly, we faced the problem of the difficulty to hire staff, people were looking for stable industries and tried to avoid those who will be affected by COVID. Every industry was hiring for talents. But still, my team saw the faith to grow back and even strong beyond COVID. Unfortunately, for the China market, especially if you are familiar with Shanghai, one of the best cities in China, the word will be “SURVIVAL”. My Shanghai team including myself have been through the lockdown for almost 3 months, that’s unbelievable for such a giant city. After the lockdown, there were under unimaginable strict control for onsite events. One Covid case would cause a huge event pause all of a sudden. It should be the worst year for China exhibition industry. Luckily, the Government decided to re-open in Dec 2022 and I guessed everyone was like in a dream and cannot believe it. We survived from 2022.
ES. Hong Kong is home to an array of innovation, from AI to fintech, what are some of the digital media trends that you are excited about for the future?
Roxanne Wong. Sure, with the past 3 years, I think innovation has been developed in an unexpected speed. As an exhibitor person for almost 10 years, I have to say that originally I supposed exhibition industry have a slower tech innovation than other industries such as Finance. We of course like to absorb new ideas yet we are more like old-fashioned person who enjoy greetings face to face, I think that’s because of our nature. Yet with the Covid, it forced us to change our lifestyle from onsite to online, and rapidly it updated to virtual events, and to hybrid events. Ai makes meta expo possible, I guess for the future, it will be a mix way for both hybrid and onsite, as what we are excited for exhibitions, is the core that we can meet each other and say hi personally. Also, I am paying attention to the integration of NFT for the exhibition industry, it may change how we manage the data in one day.
ES. Any message that you would like to share?
Roxanne Wong. It’s my pleasure to write down these few answers and share my point of view. Throughout my working experience in this industry, I am happy that Info Salons is able to support our clients to achieve to the next level. I agree with what one of them shared to us, “You are not our supplier, you are our partner. You provide better ideas and plans to us. It makes our events succeed.” Info Salons is a technology service company, and in my word, we not only provide our technology (of course it’s important), we also provide experience in the overall management.
